a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Off-season Odds and Ends

**Tyrone Corbin on Enes Kanter, unintentional dirty quote machine: I saw the same picture that you’re referring to, with the shirt off and showing his, his, he called it an 8-pack…He has to get more explosive down low and use his, when to use his girth or his size down low and when to use some quickness.

**Pickup Game Story (as told to Randy Rigby by Kevin O’Connor): They actually had four, two-on-two games between the older guys, Al and Paul, against our young guys, Enes and Derrick Favors. Well, apparently Al made a great move on Enes and went to dunk the ball. Out of nowhere, Derrick Favors comes in and just swipes the ball away and just puts it down on him. And Al Jefferson turns around and says, “This was none of your business, young man.”

** The news of the day is that Corbin promoted Mike Sanders to assistant coach and hired Brad Jones as assistant and player development coach.

Corbin on Mike Sanders: Fortunate for me…I was able to get Mike last year in a position that was really under what he was qualified for.* So he’d been a bench coach in this league before and he’s been around the game a long time and he did a great job in my opinion with Enes last year, and our big guys.

* Mike Sanders’ coaching resume includes three head coaching gigs in the Continental Basketball Association, International Basketball Association, and United States Basketball League; none of them lasted more than one season. He has been an assistant in the D-League (two seasons) and an assistant in the NBA (four seasons) with three teams, the last time in 2008. Was he overqualified for the Jazz position as Corbin says? *shrug*

**Enes Kanter(‘s agent?), UDQM:

**1280 Scripted Question and Answer of the Week:

Q: Could [the Miller family] sell the team for more than what it’s worth to them? Are they doing the community a favor here?

Rigby: Yes, they could sell it for more than, you know, there, there’s a great, in fact, when I’ve kind of heard values out there and heard the numbers some of these people were mentioning, to me, they were, they were actually being very aggressive and, and they were legitimate people.

“They were legitimate people.”

**Tyrone Corbin, uninspired quote machine:

—on Scott Layden: When I became head coach, he was all in to help me and this team grow and to help the organization to continue to get better.
—on Brad Jones: He will help us continue to grow and get better.
—on his assistants: The coaches continue to get better, and everybody sees things a little differently. I will be the guy that manage it all. But I want to hear from all my coaches, I want them to coach and help this team grow.
—on Jazz players’ summer workouts: They understand that, you know, what we did last year is what we did last year, and we have to get better this year. So the guys have been really focused on getting themselves better.
—on Derrick Favors: We expect him to grow from his season last year…once we get into camp, we expect him to show some growth.
—on Enes Kanter: We expect him to continue to grow and have a great training camp and be ready for the season.
—on training camp: It’s a chance for us to get a complete training camp in, to grow from the things that we liked from last year, to get better at some of the things that we didn’t think we did so well last year.

**Corbin on the assistant hierarchy: Sidney will probably be #1, Jeff’s probably #2 and Mike will be the third guy. But we always do the same duties and we’ll coach the team together. [Does each coach have a specific responsibility?] Well, helping us getting better. That’s everybody’s [job]. Whatever that takes. You know, we don’t have a guy that concentrating just on defense [or] one guy concentrating on offense.

**What does the promotion mean for Mike Sanders? Well, most importantly, it means he will be moving to the front row, which means he will have be more discreet when talking to his junk during games:

**Rigby on Derrick Favors, UDQM: I think we’re going to have a really special player there that our community is really going to be excited to get behind.

**Rigby on whether the Jazz are in a better position now than four years ago: Emphatically yes. You know, I think we’re better position-wise with our contracts. We have now, we’re in a very good place. Kevin has done a remarkable job in lining up our contracts so that we can come into this collective bargaining agreement with contracts that will allow us, while a lot of teams will be a little bit financially-strapped in what they’ve been, they’re able to do. We’re now in a place that we have contracts, our contracts are such that we can make the right moves and financially be able to do it, with adding players to it. And we have a great group of very young, dynamic and some of the best athletes I think in the NBA, some of the best talent in the NBA, that’s going to be with us now that’s be able to I think lead this team into the future and be a real competitor in the NBA.

Just found it interesting that the crux of his answer is all about the almighty dollar and the Jazz’s financial position when there are so many ways he could have answered this question.